Vinyl ethers are extremely reactive monomers which are known to undergo polymerization by a cationic mechanism and are useful in applications which require a high speed curing of a resin formulation. The vinyl ethers react much faster than the epoxy resins and therefore may be used for printing inks, coatings, elastomers, foams, and other types of products dependent upon the ability of the resin to cure at a rate which is consistent with other processing steps. A disadvantage attendant to the use of vinyl ethers is that their commercial availability is relatively limited. In general, the available vinyl ethers are low molecular weight monofunctional or difunctional monomers, whereas in most commercial applications higher molecular weight oligomeric materials are preferred.
The present invention discloses vinyl ether terminated esters. As will be seen, the structure of such esters is susceptible to wide variations with a minimum change in the reactants. This flexibility permits facile variation in the properties and characteristics of the vinyl ether terminated ester oligomers as well as comparable variations in the resulting cured resins. Where the oligomer contains more than one vinyl ether group the cured resins are extensively cross-linked, very high molecular weight polymers. The polymers are thermosetting materials with a wide range of properties depending upon the structure of the oligomeric precursor. Although the vinyl ether terminated esters of this invention have been designed to fill the need for radiation curable coatings, they may have a much broader use. In particular, the esters of our invention are readily polymerized by means other than radiation curing, and the resulting polymers are meant to be subsumed in our invention.